Main menu

Monthly Archives: July 2015

It’s July and for many that means Christmas in July and time to get started on sewing for the end of year festive season. For those of us taking part in Ho, Ho, Ho and On We Sew, however, it means that we are seven months into our festive sewing and well on our way to being organised for the end of year festivities.

As always there is a monthly link party for those who have been sewing away and this month the party is being co-hosted by Martha over at Weekend Doings and Chelsea at Patch the Giraffe. Both ladies have great ideas to share: Martha has shared her pattern for an envelope bag, perfect for storing stationary, ipads or other tablet devices; while Chelsea has a tutorial for the cutest Christmas pillows.

The link party will be open till the end of the month as usual and don’t forget that if you join in the fun and link up your makes you will be in with a chance to win this month’s link up giveaway which is being sponsored by the Fat Quarter Shop who are giving one lucky winner the chance to pick their favourite from the Fat Quarter Shop’s range of mini charm packs. I wish that I could say that I was as organised as Martha and Chelsea this month but I have to be honest and say that I have barely picked up a needle. We’ve been enjoying/surviving what I can truly say is the most amazing of summers and all thoughts of sewing have just been abandoned for now. I’m sure that once things cool down again I’ll get back to it with renewed vigour. In the meantime I look forward to seeing what you all have sewn and if you haven’t done any festive sewing yet then don’t fret as there is still plenty of time left to get sewing and to link up your makes.

Following on from last week’s EPP pouch swap post I thought I would tell you all about the #IGNeedleBookSwap that I recently took part in. I do so love needle books, and I definitely have nowhere near enough of them. Ideally I think I need a couple for my sewing room to store collections of needles and then after that I need a whole selection of smaller needle books to keep in individual project pouches. As I sew, quilt, embroider, knit, crochet and cross stitch depending on my mood I own quite a selection of needles and needless to say I don’t have anywhere near enough needlebooks to keep them properly sorted. I really don’t know why I don’t make more of them myself as they are a relatively quick and easy make, but I think that, as is the case with so many other projects, I put off sewing for myself if there is a chance to sew for others. As a result when I saw that @SameliasMum was hosting a needle book swap over on Instagram I was quick to sign up.

As with so many of the swaps that I join this was a secret swap, meaning that I was not making for the same person that was making for me. My swap partner indicated that she did not like animal print or gold or silver but liked most other things so I pretty much had free reign when it came to choosing fabrics and designs. I still had some pieces of Kate Spain’s Horizon fabrics and some assorted orange scraps sitting around from the summer pillow I had made for the Four Season’s Pillow Swap (more about that soon), so I couldn’t resist using those. For the cover of the needle book I went with a simple 3×4 arrangement of 1″ squares that I quilted using a decorative stitch. For the rest of the cover I used some grunge fabrics, left over from the EPP pouch.

I choose some pale green felt for the pages and decorated them with assorted ribbons and trims.

I included pockets on the inside of the front and back covers, perfect for holding notions, needle threaders, or even a little pair of foldable scissors that, complete with a bottonholed fob, would also attach to a button on the back inside cover of the needlebook to ensure they wouldn’t fall out in transit.

As an added extra I decided I would make a small pouch to match/hold the needle book, along with a small strawberry style pincushion.

I packed them all together along with a spool of Aurifil 50wt #4553 and as my parcel was travelling all the way to Mexico I included a little bit of Switzerland in the form of a fabric handkerchief decorated with edelweiss.

I was delighted to hear that my parcel was received with much delight by my partner and I’m sure she will enjoy using it’s contents for a long time to come.

From my partner I received a beautiful felt needle book that was completely hand stitched. As it is a larger book I have decided that it is perfect for some stay at home storage and although it came with some hand stitching needles this book has actually now been now dedicated to my knitting/wool needles which were badly in need of a home. There is a very clever little scissors holder included, so I have popped in the small pair of scissors that I usually keep for snipping wool threads when I am finishing off knitted items.

Included with the needle book were a selection of other sewing goodies that have also become very useful additions to my knitting bag. It now has it’s own pincushion and tape measure, so no more stealing from my sewing table, and there is a nice selection of buttons that are just waiting to embellish a new make. Even the little notebook was added to the bag. No more scraps of paper with scribbled notes on new designs for me!

I hope you have enjoyed hearing all about the fun I had with the #IGNeedleBookSwap. There are still more swap stories to tell so I hope to see you back here soon for the next instalment.

Time to play catch-up here I think. We’ve been enjoying a wonderful summer here so far and while that means we’re getting in lots and lots of fun garden and pool time it also means I’m staying far away from my computer and my blog. But now, as we experience a major heatwave, well major for us, I’m taking a little break from the garden, escaping the sun for a while and trying to play catch up with some blog posts.

As I am sure you all know only too well by now if there is one thing I do a lot of it is hand sewing. When first I tried English Paper Piecing (EPP) I was unconvinced that it was a method of sewing that I would enjoy. How wrong I was! Those first few hexies started my addiction with EPP and designing my own EPP projects. Because EPP is something that I can do pretty much anywhere any time I like to keep some pouches filled with supplies for whatever projects I am working on at a given time, and yes I usually have a few different projects on the go at one time.

At the moment, for example, I am finishing up a mini quilt for the IG #handpiecedminiswap and another project for the #selfishswap; I have started trial piecing some maple leaves for the Flickr based Four Seasons Pillow Swap; I have my long-term project, the sun prints quilt; and finally there is my Liberty hexie collection – I try to always have a selection of ¼” and 1” Liberty hexies basted and ready to sew with just in case. What I work on usually depends on how much time I have available and whether or not there is an upcoming deadline.

Because I have so many different projects on the go it helps if I have plenty of pouches in which I can pack the supplies for each individual project. However, I regularly find that there is no such thing as too many pouches. As a result I am always happy to add more to my collection and have found that swaps are a great way of doing so. One of latest additions came courtesy of the EPP swap group on Flickr of which I am a member. In the latest swap round we all made pouches to swap.

I received this gorgeous pouch from my partner and not only did she make me a beautiful pouch but she also filled it with lots of fabric goodies.

As this was a secret swap I wasn’t making a pouch for the same person who created for me. When I first started to EPP I was playing around with hexie butterfly designs and decided I would dig into my hexie collection to recreate one of these for my partners pouch.

I chose a Grunge Basic fabric for the outer shell of the pouch and to this I appliquéd the butterfly, thread stitched some antennae, and quilted the whole with vertical wavy lines before going on to create a zippered pouch lined with Makower’s Sew Retro Vintage Pattern fabric in teal.

I added a detachable wrist strap to add portability to the pouch and as an added extra tucked a charm pack of Paris Flea Market fabric inside.

I do hope that my partner is getting as much use and enjoyment out of her pouch as I am out of mine. It currently holds the pieces for my #handpiecedminiswap and is well travelled as I have been working on this project a lot on my commute to and from work.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my most recent pouch swap. Next up will be needlebooks. Hope to see you back here then.